Will the Greens’ ECE Policy Really Benefit Children?

Palmerston North, NZ – The Greens
Party yesterday announced as a key part of its election
platform that it would be supporting families by seeking to
extend the 20 hours’ free early childhood education (ECE)
subsidy to 2-year-old children.

But Barbara Smith,
National Director of the Home Education Foundation of New
Zealand, is concerned that this policy could normalise what
she believes is a misguided emphasis on ECE above parental
care and interaction.

According to the Greens Party press
release, “Good-quality ECE helps children reach their full
potential, both in education and in leading healthy and
productive lives.”

“Where is their research?” asks
Mrs Smith. “Quality education for most preschoolers begins
in the home.”

The research, says Mrs Smith, demonstrates
that ECE only tends to benefit vulnerable children who would
otherwise be neglected at home.

According to Dr Jane
Silloway Smith, of the Maxim Institute, “ECE has been
shown to benefit children from disadvantaged backgrounds
because these children often lack what their more advantaged
peers have: a nurturing home environment. Educational
researchers regularly report that a nurturing home
environment will have a more profound impact on a child’s
educational achievement than preschool programmes – a
reason often stated for why more advantaged children are not
often found to gain much, if anything, educationally from
ECE.”

In fact, much of the research shows that ECE
disadvantages most children. In one of the most rigorous
studies available, the US National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development found a strong link between long hours
of non-maternal care and behavioural problems such as
aggression, demanding behaviour, cruelty, fighting, and so
on, even in children coming from usually privileged
backgrounds.

In a 2013 Canadian study, researchers from
the University of Montreal and the Sainte-Justine Hospital
Research Centre said that children who attend daycare were
more likely to become obese between the ages of 4 and 10.
More seriously, Canadian behavioural psychologist Dr Gordon
Neufeld believes that early preschool is causing a
socialisation crisis. “When you put children together
prematurely before they can hold on to themselves, then they
become like [the others] and it crushes the individuality
rather than hones it.”

Preschool is also linked to low
academic achievement. A 2011 study from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology found that early childhood education
“comes at a cost: children are less likely to discover
novel information” and inhibits “exploration and
discovery”. Sociologist J Conrad Schwartz found in 1986
that group care was associated with lower intelligence,
poorer verbal skills and shorter attention spans.

“The
fact is that when children have a lot of one-on-one
interaction with adults at home, they do better than at
preschool interacting with peers,” says Mrs Smith. “For
children with engaged parents who provide learning in the
home, preschool is only a drawback.

“Instead of
hurting children by pressuring them into ECE, let’s
support families by helping parents to do what they do
best.”

More research on early childhood education can be
found at www.hef.org.nz.

About the Home
Education Foundation

The Home Education
Foundation has been informing parents for 28 years about the
fantastic opportunity to de-institutionalise our sons and
daughters and to embrace the spiritual, intellectual and
academic freedom that is ours for the taking. Through
conferences, journals, newsletters and all kinds of personal
communications, we explain the vision of handcrafting each
child into a unique individual, complete with virtuous
character, a hunger for service to others, academic acumen
and a strong work ethic. For more information, please visit
www.hef.org.nz.

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